Human rights report lashes Australia’s ‘diabolical’ asylum seeker treatment and ‘appalling’ youth crime laws | Human rights

Australia’s “diabolical” treatment of asylum seekers and youth crime has worsened, a global human rights advocacy body has warned, urging voters to push back on leaders politicising the issue for gain.

Human Rights Watch’s latest world report has lashed Australia for going backwards on children in the criminal justice system in 2024, referencing the Northern Territory’s decision to reintroduce spit hoods for youth detainees and the continued use of watch houses to detain children in Queensland.

Last year a Guardian Australia investigation revealed confronting footage of children in Queensland watch houses, locked in “freezing” isolation cells, becoming panicked and struggling to breathe.

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In December, the new Queensland government passed “adult crime, adult time” laws, dramatically increasing maximum sentences for child offenders. The government concedes the laws are contrary to international and state human rights law, are discriminatory against young people and will “have a greater impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children”.

The state’s premier, David Crisafulli, this week vowed to make “many more” changes to strengthen the state’s hardline youth justice laws.

HRW, a global body which provides country-level reports for more than 100 countries, described Australia as a “vibrant democracy … marred by some key human rights concerns”.

But the organisation’s Australia director, Daniela Gavshon, told Guardian Australia those concerns were heightened last year and that changes in the youth justice system were “appalling” and a “complete flagrant disregard of international standards”.

“[Children as young as 10 years old] don’t have the maturity and capacity for abstract reasoning and to really comprehend the consequences of their actions,” she said.

“There’s nothing to stop governments making non-criminal, child-friendly, multi-disciplinary interventions that can be a response to unlawful behaviour.”

The report also condemns the treatment of asylum seekers transferred to detention facilities on Nauru – many of whom have had their phones confiscated – noting that Australia “continues to evade its international obligations”.

Several groups of asylum seekers were taken to the tiny island north-east of Australia last year after it was briefly closed in mid-2023. Almost 100 people are believed to be in the immigration centre.

Harsh migration and immigration detention laws, passed during a marathon Senate sitting in November, now allow the federal government to pay third countries to take non-citizens and ban travellers from specified countries.

Gavshon said these developments had set a concerning precedent for countries abroad. The former UK conservative government began work on a scheme to deport its asylum seekers to Rwanda. The botched plan had cost about £700m ($1.38bn).

“Countries have looked at Australia as an inspiration for the way it treats asylum seekers and refugees and that is really diabolical,” Gavshon said.

“Australia is not a country to be following on asylum seekers and human rights.”

With the federal election due to be called by May, Gavshon said she was concerned politicians would demonise asylum seekers and refugees to win votes, urging Australians not to buy into the political rhetoric.

“We need to see these people as individuals and people, and really humanise them. The minute we stop humanising them is when we start to get really worrying policies.”